California archbishop: gay textbook an attack on parental rights

LOS ANGELES, July 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Catholic primate of California is warning his flock against a new homosexualist curriculum passed by California’s legislature that he says poses a serious threat to parental rights.

Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles came out swinging against Senate Bill 48, which mandates teaching about homosexual figures in social studies classes.

Known as the FAIR Education Act, the bill also prohibits inclusion of so-called “homophobic” material in historical lessons, barring “any matter reflecting adversely” on gays on the basis of their sexual orientation. Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has not said whether he would sign the bill, which is the first of its kind in America.

“There was a time not too long ago, when American society encouraged family values and tried to strengthen the bonds of parents and children. Recent events in our state and nation remind us that’s not always the case anymore,” said Gomez, writing in the LA archdiocesan newspaper The Tidings.

As leader of one of the most powerful sees in the United States, Gomez’s word carries particular weight, especially among Catholic Hispanics. Catholics in California make up 31 percent of the population, a demographic second only to non-Catholic Christians, according to a 2008 Pew study.

Gomez said forcing schoolchildren to learn about historical figures and their sexual orientation without parental consent “amounts to the government rewriting history books based on pressure-group politics. It is also another example of the government interfering with parents’ rights to be their children’s primary educators.”

The Catholic prelate, in union with the state’s Catholic episcopal conference, urged parents to research more about the bills.

The archbishop also criticized a pending bill to allow children under 12 to receive Gardasil, a vaccine for sexually transmitted disease, without parental consent.

Nationally, 91 deaths and more than 21,000 adverse reactions have been attributed to Gardasil, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as cited by California Bishops. The drug is nonetheless being pushed on girls as young as 11 in public schools across America.

“By passing this bill, in effect, government would be encouraging young people to engage in activities that are contrary to their parents’ moral values,” Gomez said, “and then to lie about it or keep it secret from their parents.”

“Let us work to become a people who no longer resort to abortion, birth control, in vitro fertilization and divorce.”